I pried open the tender lip
of the box—as careful as a sexton—
to hear the crimped secrets
it withheld all these years.The softened wood trembled—
almost gave—under my fumbling hands.
Rather than tobacco leaves,
I smelled the scent of aged, yellowing paper.I left the wispy rosewood lid—
ajar—so as to keep the spirits in.
Postcards lined the fragile walls
like taffeta in a coffin.I turned it over—as if it were
a decanter—to let the last drop of sherry fall.
Newspaper clippings and receipts poured out,
and I smoothened their kinks on my knee.I found a faded love letter—
wedged between the sheaves of crumbling wood—
Its sides were split open as if with a paper knife.
The return address was blotted out.I wondered if the homesick hands wrote—
from afar—their spidery words crawling under my skin,
and if the author were much too lovelorn—his thoughts as illegible as his penmanship.I pinched the time-stamped photographs
between my fingers—as prudent as a gardener— clipping the heads of the late summer roses
from the fading hedgerow.It was a splintery echo-chamber,
the box,—my confidant—my abettor.
A conduit for lost voices
put away on the dresser.It was brittle like a cicada shell
left behind on the ground;
The nymph flown out,
absconding to the pine trees—